Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to news in the morning of September 15, Beijing time, Amazon will allow brands that sell products on its platform to send marketing emails to shoppers. This is a risky move to boost sales and may flood users' inboxes with spam.

The company announced the measure at the Amazon Accelerate conference in Seattle on Sept. 14 local time. The purpose of the campaign is to show independent merchants the new features of the Amazon platform, where more than half of the products sold on this retail platform come from third-party independent sellers.

Merchants will be able to send free emails to new shoppers, regular customers and their largest consumer groups through a new tool called "customized audiences", which will also allow sellers to monitor the results. The tool has been tested this year and will be available to all US sellers in early 2023.

The move subverts Amazon's long-standing attitude that third-party sellers will never be in direct contact with customers because they fear it will alienate consumers from the platform. But the pace of frontline sales has slowed from its peak during the pandemic, and antitrust investigators are investigating Amazon's power over millions of third-party suppliers. Some merchants also say that Amazon even makes it difficult for them to build relationships with the most loyal buyers.

If customers do not want to receive marketing emails, they must unsubscribe.

"the downside of this is that it could lead to a lot of spam and I don't know how they will manage it," said Kirthi Kalyanam, director of the Institute of Retail Management at Santa Clara University. "retailers send so many emails that shoppers' inboxes will definitely be flooded."

Despite the risks, merchants are likely to accept the move. According to data released by Insider Intelligence, online sales in the United States will grow by just 9.4% this year to $1 trillion, the first time growth has slipped to single digits. Some Amazon merchants are already preparing for a bleak holiday shopping season, as inflation-affected consumers curb their spending and focus on necessities such as food and fuel.

Amazon accounts for 37.8% of all online spending in the United States, six times that of its nearest competitor, Wal-Mart, according to the data. In order to maintain this advantage as competitors improve their e-commerce business, the Internet giant is constantly introducing new tools to help sellers and brands boost sales.

Amazon also launched a new question-and-answer feature that allows merchants to connect with shoppers through its Alexa voice-activated platform. For example, shoppers can see and hear answers from merchants and links to their products when they ask questions such as "how to remove pet hair from a carpet." The feature will be available to some merchants in October and to all merchants early next year.

"many brand owners have spent years becoming experts in their product areas, and this is an opportunity to connect customers to their brands," Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon's vice president of global sales services, said in an interview.

Email marketing has pushed Amazon further into advertising, where founder Jeff Jeff Bezos was initially very resistant to advertising, but it has since become a fast-growing and profitable business for the company. Advertising services generated $8.8 billion in revenue in the second quarter of Amazon, up 18% from a year earlier.

Before the email marketing strategy was officially implemented, Amazon had allowed shoppers to follow their favorite brands and then send messages to them. The biggest difference between the two is that shoppers had to choose whether or not to receive the information, but now they will passively accept it, and if they want to stop accepting it, they need to opt out of the subscription.

Karayam believes that Amazon's move is to encourage more communication, because the company wants to help merchants gather more insights about their customers. "now these sellers don't see any data about their customers, which will definitely cause problems for them," he said. "if 90% of your sales are on Amazon, you are basically moving forward with your eyes closed, and such a seller is bad for Amazon."

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